Cardiologist Prof. Valerio Sanguigni, inventor of the antioxidant blend Powellnux, talks about his experience with Covid.
English: I confess that I was very hesitant about making this experience public. As a doctor, I have always respected those who share their illness on social media, also for the cathartic function that comes from it. This time, however, I would like to try to describe, through my testimony as a patient and doctor, a brief history of the facts, telling what the press and the media will never tell, and try to show what Coronavirus disease really is. Being on the front line as the head of an internal medicine UOC with 35 beds, I had taken into account the possibility of getting infected. Thanks to our strict internal protocols for recruiting, filtering and managing patients, we had managed to treat, in this difficult moment, many non-Covid patients who could not find space in many other facilities, now dedicated only to the treatment of Covid patients, and indeed with pride and effort we were a point of reference for many emergency rooms. Then one day in December, the unexpected happened, typical of this disease. A sudden cluster of 10 positive patients, who had entered with a negative molecular swab. And despite all our protections (masks, gowns, etc.), all my medical staff and half of the paramedics were infected. Hence my first personal reflection, which I will summarize later, as a doctor and researcher, and that is, when the viral load becomes strong, as in the case of a place where there are many infected people together, it is really difficult to protect yourself from the Coronavirus, because it lurks everywhere. The other colleagues and paramedics did quite well... not me...
After the first lines of fever and the strange sensation of extreme weakness, absolutely different from all flu syndromes, I performed a rapid antigen test which came back positive immediately, later confirmed by a molecular swab performed two days later. I immediately began to treat myself with antibiotics, cortisone and heparin, but I understood that the disease was taking a bad turn with continuous fever peaks and a continuous cough. On the seventh day, thanks also to a colleague and close friend of mine, Gennaro Martino, to whom I perhaps owe my life, an ambulance transported me in the evening to the Celio military hospital, one of the best Covid-19 departments in Rome, and the chest CT scan, performed in the evening with difficulty because I couldn't even hold my breath, confirmed the diagnosis: bilateral interstitial pneumonia at both the bases and the apices. I found myself in the COVID 19 department, a long corridor near the sub-intensive care unit, I was a patient at risk.
Hence the second personal reflection, I have never smoked, I have no ongoing pathologies, I have been taking antioxidant and vitamin supplements for a lifetime (which perhaps partly helped me with my prognosis), but this damned disease took me in full and in a few days it affected my lungs. I was treated by a team of doctors and nurses dressed in Martian suits with masks and double gloves who, more than heroes, I define as men and women with an absolute dedication and passion for caring for the sick and a unique courage, of which we should be proud. The oxygen mask with the gurgling of the filter water accompanied every moment, night and day of the two weeks I spent in the hospital together with the monitor next to my bed to whose pulse oximeter I often connected my finger to study my oxygen saturation and understand if things were going better or worse. Because this is how you live in a COVID ward, dependent on oxygen, drugs and in the hope of glimpsing a signal to breathe and feel better. But what makes this disease unique, never seen in 40 years of personal experience as a doctor, is its absolute unpredictability.
And this is my third personal reflection. COVID 19 is not a flu like the others... it's something else... I have treated hundreds of pneumonias in these years, I have seen hundreds of patients slowly and progressively recover but COVID 19 is something else.... It is absolutely unpredictable. I have seen young patients (40-50 years old) with whom I spoke calmly at a distance the day before, while I looked out from my room, being rushed to intensive care at night. In the evening I heard the fast footsteps, amplified by the overalls of the nurses who rushed the stretcher. Since I was initially a borderline patient at risk of sudden desaturation and therefore intensive care, they subjected me to IV treatment with Remdesevir. And I am convinced that this drug saved my life. Already after the second administration I understood that I was better. I never slept at night and when I was better, I tried to turn off the oxygen (which they had already reduced in percentage in a clear way) I walked at night for a few minutes along the corridor to do what they call the walking Test, that is to understand if by walking my oxygen saturation in the blood remained good. During those walks I read the names "erased" .... on the door of some rooms and this will remain another indelible testimony as a patient and doctor.
English: I have so many unique human stories to tell. I made a special friendship with my roommates who in a certain sense felt safe near a doctor, even if sick, for the advice and reassurances I was able to give them. I had a wonderful relationship with the nurses, assistants and doctors who assisted me and comforted me in a unique way with professionalism, passion and absolute dedication, to whom I told to abandon all hesitation and treat me like a patient, not a doctor. After the last negative swab and the evident clinical improvement I was discharged after 2 weeks and returned home where I am recovering very, very slowly. I would like to leave everyone with just three brief considerations, which come from my experience first as a patient who was saved (because that's what happened), then as a doctor who with his experience tried to grasp what others don't think of and finally as a researcher who has been publishing and studying for years trying to interpret in a real and critical way what science highlights.
- Covid 19 “is not a simple flu” it is a disease that in almost 40 years of activity as a doctor on the front line, I have never seen and which will take time to understand. It has an incredible contagiousness never seen before, but above all it is absolutely unpredictable and fearful, it can violently strike even subjects like me, apparently healthy and protected without any pre-existing pathology, and rapidly evolve for the worse. I am convinced, and studies are highlighting it, that even positive paucisymptomatic people, if they did a chest CT scan, would find signs of pulmonary compromise
- The number of young patients (40 to 60 years old) who sometimes rapidly deteriorated that I saw in the ward impressed me, which means that the disease is now everywhere and can affect anyone. In my humble opinion it is more widespread than the official figures say. It is essential to always use protection with masks (possibly FPP2) but "real distancing" is essential, that is, avoiding closed environments where there is a high viral load, that is, meetings and gatherings (even family ones) of several people in the same environment. Never "take off your mask in closed environments" with other people around. Only in this way can contagion be avoided, because the higher the viral load, the more the possibility of contracting a virus that is incredibly contagious and has an unpredictable progression in everyone increases exponentially. And remember that a negative swab does not mean that the disease cannot be incubating, as the case of the 10 patients who later tested positive in my ward taught me….
- The only real way out, believe me, is the Vaccine. The effort that has been carried out worldwide that has brought together the best researchers in the world is an extraordinary thing. I have no intention of intervening in the anti-Vax controversy. If it were possible, I would like to take a person who is skeptical about the vaccine by the hand, dress them in a Martian suit, with shoes, with a mask, with double gloves and take them on a tour of a Covid 19 ward to look into the eyes of people in bed with an oxygen mask. And as for the feared fear of allergies, as a patient who still bears the signs of Covid-19 pneumonia and as a doctor who has treated thousands of allergic reactions, I will limit myself to using a simple comparison as I often use in my university lecture courses. I can compare a possible allergic reaction to the vaccine to a slap in the face, Covid-19 pneumonia to a head-on collision with another car. You decide what is worth choosing the pen….I am convinced that the world will win this battle that will change forever our habits, the way we consider life and above all the greatest good which is health.
Thanks to all the doctors on the front lines, honor to their courage and their unique passion. To those who continue to ignore the evidence I leave this aphorism that has guided my life:
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
